Slagbroder
by Varia Lectio
Summary: After a Christmas party, Toki decides he just wants a brother... but Skwisgaar isn't sure he will ever be ready for a sibling. No slash, just a friendship fic.


_**Slagbröder**_

_**Rating:**_ PG-13, for language, liquor consumption, and mentions of Skwisgaar's slutty mom.

_**Summary:**_ After a Christmas party, Toki decides he just wants a brother...but Skwisgaar isn't sure he will ever be ready for a sibling. Fluffy stuff, meant to pull the heartstrings. No slash, just a friendship fic.

_**Thanks: **_Thanks to _taterbird_ on LJ for support and comments.

/

It was Christmas Eve in Mordhaus, and while the mice might not be stirring, the place's main residents certainly were. Stirring...and drinking...and carousing. And then more drinking. Murderface was carving the broken-off leg of what had formerly been an antique chair into something he grandly called a "shtatue", while Nathan watched with rapt attention, eager to see if Murderface would lop off a finger or thumb for Christmas. Pickles was singing "Danny Boy" to the tune of some Wisconsin drinking song -- very loudly and very badly.

And Toki...well, Toki was doing what Toki did best, other than playing the guitar and assembling model airplanes. Dance Dance Revolution. Drunk as a skunk (as Pickles would say, were he not singing at the moment), he was going through the convulsion and contortions of a particularly complex dance that required both fast reflexes and fast movements.

Skwisgaar was just watching Toki. Well, watching Toki and drinking _and_ fingering the strings of his guitar, but then Skwisgaar had always been excellent at multi-tasking. He was watching with a laser-like precision that rivaled Nathan's, noting every move Toki made, patiently waiting for the younger man to slip or trip and keel over onto his ass or face. In his inebriated state, Skwisgaar wasn't quite sure whether he wanted Toki to fall over or finish his dance successfully; either outcome, he thought fuzzily, would be funny.

Toki, who had begun to giggle at something or other, slipped and tipped backwards. He saved himself with a hand going back, and moreover managed to complete the dance successfully. Finally relaxing and letting all control over his limbs go, he giggled even harder and flopped onto his back, arms and legs splaying out like a rag doll's over the floor.

Skwisgaar cheered drunkenly and snapped off some quick celebratory chords. He clapped.

Toki, still on his back, tipped his head back and back, long brown hair scrunching back and whispering over the floor with the motion. "Skwis?" he mumbled, eyes shining with a blurry sort of gloss from alcohol. Patches of sweat darkened his t-shirt on his chest and underarms and streaked down his flanks.

"A goods one, Toki," Skwisgaar mumbled back, getting up from the arm of the couch where he'd been sitting and nearly falling himself. "But don't yous think it times for little Toki to go beddy-times, _ja_?"

"Naaaw," Toki said, trying to be whiny and innocent-seeming at the same time, and failing. He grunted when Skwisgaar helped him to his feet. "But Skwis--!"

"Toki, yous drunk," Skwisgaar murmured. "Yous needs to go to sleeps already." He tried to push Toki's waterfall of mussed brown hair back out of his face and succeeded only in plastering some of Toki's sweat into it even further.

"But Skwisgaar, if I sleep then I wakes up with a hard-on!"

Skwisgaar blinked. Once. It was a long blink.

Toki noticed the look on his fellow Scandinavian's face. "Uh, a hand-over?" he said hopefully, trying to correct himself.

"Yous mean 'hang-over', dildo-head," Skwisgaar said with a superior grin. "And yes, we all gonna haves the mothers-fuckings of hang-overs tomorrow."

Toki groaned and shook his head, then stopped moving as he turned abruptly green. From his grip on Toki's shoulders, Skwisgaar felt the younger man's body heave convulsively. Skwisgaar's stomach clenched as well, but it was a cold sort of clenching; a panic-clench.

"Toki --Toki, holds it for a minute," he snapped, his voice tight, then tucked Toki under one arm and hauled him bodily out of the rec-room and to the kitchen, which was conveniently close enough so that the members of Dethklok could eat and snack whenever they chose. Toki's heaving body banged against Skwisgaar's side and guitar as they did a stumbling, sliding sort of run together.

Toki, bless his soul, did manage to hold it until Skwisgaar got him to the massive kitchen sink, which was wide and deep enough to wash a baby in. Skwisgaar pushed the younger man's face over the sink, held his long brown hair out of his face with one hand, and rubbed the young Norwegian's back with the other as Toki vomited, long and hard.

When his young bandmate was finally finished, Skwisgaar ran the tap for a moment to wash away the vomit. It was thin, brown, watery stuff; mostly alcohol and light sugary snacks that broke down quickly in bile. Toki slowly tipped himself up from the sink and gave a gurgling grunt when he looked at Skwisgaar. He was teary-eyed and red-faced, his mouth and mustachios dripping with stinking, acrid fluid.

"Toki, you're a complete mess," Skwisgaar said in a low voice, unconsciously slipping into Swedish. "Let me get you cleaned up now." Toki groaned and clung to the sink's ledge as Skwisgaar bustled around, grabbing up a clean water-glass and a towel.

He moistened the towel with some mild soap and warm water, and proceeded to mop Toki's face, taking especial care to clean out the vomit from the younger man's dangling Fu Manchu facial hair. Toki mumbled and bubbled like a baby throughout the ministrations. Then Skwisgaar filled the water-glass with cold water and put it to Toki's lips. "Take a drink," he ordered, still speaking Swedish. Using his native tongue gave him a sense of command over the situation, as well as a sense of comfort.

"But Skwis, my stomach feels terrible..." Toki protested, likewise slipping into his birth language, Norwegian. Skwisgaar understood him perfectly.

"This will help you," Skwisgaar replied calmly. "Take a mouthful, hold it, swish it around in your mouth, then spit into the sink. Do that until your mouth is clean. Come on, now." He brooked no resistance and stood with arms folded over his guitar as Toki did as he was told. When he was finished, Skwisgaar took the glass and filled it half-full, and made Toki drink down the water in small sips.

"Skwisgaar, how'd you learn all this? What to do when you're drunk?" Toki said finally when he was done.

"I've been drinking for longer than you have," Skwisgaar replied with a grim smile. "And Serveta loves to drink. She wasn't exactly helpful when I first got drunk myself at the age of nine, but I watched her and figured out what to do when I felt sick." He fell silent for a moment. No, his mother had not exactly been helpful -- she had, in fact, been the exact opposite. She had screamed at Skwisgaar for getting into her stash of liquor; screamed until he, cowering at her feet, was whey-faced and reeling, then slapped him upstairs to bed. The moment he had been alone, he had promptly vomited all over himself. Skwisgaar had changed his own clothes, washed out his own mouth in his private bathroom, and put himself to bed, still trembling and nauseated, his stomach still bitter and squirming from fear and alcohol.

"That's sad," Toki breathed, looking up at Skwisgaar with reddened eyes.

Skwisgaar nodded. His mind began to wander down a very dark path before he pulled himself together with an effort and said firmly, "Now, to bed with you, Toki Wartooth. It's Christmas and you wouldn't want to miss Santa giving you presents, now would you? You know he won't come unless you get to sleep!"

"Oh, no!" Toki murmured.

"Oh, yes!" Skwisgaar said, fighting not to smile at Toki's naïveté. "Come on now--" he led him out of the kitchen and back to the rec-room-- "let's say goodnight to the rest of them and then to bed with you."

They staggered back into the rec-room, only to find the scene much changed from before. Pickles had stopped singing and had passed out; someone (Nathan, probably) had rolled the drunken drummer over onto his side in case he had to vomit. Nathan was sitting grinning at a copious puddle of blood, a blood-stained, half-finished 'shtatue', and a carving knife driven point-first into the nearby end-table. Murderface, aside from the blood, was nowhere to be seen.

"He cuts himself?" Skwisgaar asked Nathan, reverting back to his frustratingly bad English, which never seemed to improve no matter how much he used the damn language.

Nathan slowly looked up through a curtain of sweaty black hair. "Yeah, finally." He smirked grimly. "I told him so. I said, 'Murderface, you're gonna cut the crap outta your hand,' and he said, 'So why don't I do it to your face, dickweed!' and I said, 'I'll like to see you try!'" He laughed. "And then Murderface sliced a flap of skin offa his hand like he was carvin' up the Christmas ham!"

Toki winced and began to look pale and sweaty again; Skwisgaar, not wanting a replay of what had just happened back in the kitchen, hastily bade Nathan and the unconscious Pickles goodnight and steered Toki to his bedroom.

He dropped Toki into bed, fished out a dry, clean shirt for him, and made him put it on. Then he tucked the covers up over the younger man, feeling a bit silly about all of this (Skwisgaar rarely, if ever, expended such effort on anyone other than himself), but also feeling a bit motherly as well, though he would never in a million years admit it. His own mother had never done such things for him whether he had been well or sick, and now, when Toki was feeling bad, he found himself slipping into a pattern that he had never witnessed or felt personally, save in stories...stories that he had always, in his heart of hearts, wanted to be true and real. But the reality of his childhood had never bent itself to Skwisgaar's wishes, and so of course the stories had never come true.

He sighed, looking down at Toki in the near darkness. A pink night-light shaped like a little demon glowed comfortingly near the younger man's bedside.

Toki mumbled something worried-sounding in Norwegian that was too low and fast for Skwisgaar to catch, but Skwisgaar knew the younger man wasn't feeling good. So he began to sing.

The song was a Swedish lullaby that he'd heard on the radio as a child. He had been trying to sleep but had been unsuccessful, and then the song had come on, scratchy and distant, coming from a old feminine voice that he imagined as belonging to a kindly grandmother. Though it was completely and utterly non-brutal, he'd managed to tape it and, later on, learned how to play it by ear. Somehow it always gave him a comfort that he had almost never received from his mother's arms and voice.

_"Ensam går jag här och vankar,_

_Söker efter vännen min_

_Ensam går jag här och vankar,_

_Söker efter vännen min."_

He softly picked out the melody on his guitar as he sang. He had a deep and somewhat off-key singing voice, but then again, the old lady who had originally sung that song so long ago for him hadn't had a perfect voice, either.

_"Se, jag möter honom här,_

_Han, som är min hjärtans kär_

_Vill du såsom förr med mej_

_Svänga om I dansen säj?"_

When he finished, Toki had fallen fast asleep, and Skwisgaar felt weak and horrendously non-brutal. When he laid a hand over the strings and silenced them, he snuck out of Toki's bedroom feeling almost ashamed, as though someone might see him -- or worse, might have been hiding there in the hallway, listening to him sing a Swedish lullaby for his drunken friend. That would be horrible. He would never be able to live it down.

He managed to slip into his own bedroom thankfully unnoticed, and sat there on his bed for the longest time, confused and pained, his emotions churning like Toki's guts had done just a little while ago. After a while, he stretched out on his bed, the guitar across his belly a comforting weight, and managed to fall asleep.

/

When Skwisgaar woke, his head was pounding with a hang-over headache. Everything in his bedroom seemed far too white. He groaned, squinted, then shut his eyes again. "Fucking liquor," he muttered in Swedish.

When he managed to stumble down to the rec-room, he found Nathan, Pickles, and Toki crowded together on the couch, staring blearily at the Christmas tree, which, as always, was spray-painted black and hung with red lights and plastic icicles dripping fake blood. The ornaments gleamed, silver and red and black, amongst the lights; they were shaped like demons, skulls, guitars, weapons, and the like. A largish demon ornament crouched atop the tree.

Beneath the tree, there was a pile of various presents, all of them beautifully wrapped.

"Brutal," Nathan commented listlessly. Like the rest, he had reddened eyes and a pallid, puffy face.

"At leascht Shanta brought us our preshents," Murderface noted, though with his heavily bandaged left hand and his hangover, he likely felt too bad to actually get up and rifle through them to find his gifts.

"It's the thought that counts," Pickles finished, looking the worst of all. The others started to nod in agreement, then groaned and stopped moving.

"Skwisgaar!" Toki said when he saw the Swede. Out of all of them, Wartooth looked the best, with his scrubbed face and clean mustachios, and Skwisgaar paused to take a little pride in his handiwork there before waving to Toki and slumping down beside him.

"Skwisgaar, don't you want your presents?" Toki chattered in Norwegian. "Don't you want to see what Santa brought us?"

Skwisgaar was very aware of everyone else staring at them. "Toki, be quiet please. Our heads hurt!" he said softly in Swedish.

"But I'm fine," Toki protested, again in Norwegian.

"Yeah, well, I'm not, douchebag," Pickles snapped. "So shut up."

Toki's eyes were huge. "Yous knows _Norsk_?" he sputtered.

"Ummm..." Pickles groaned and rubbed his aching head, throwing his dreadlocks into even more of a disordered state then they already were. "I had a neighbor who came from Norway when I was growing up. Hell, I think half the people in Wisconsin are from Norway or somethin'." He sighed. "Sorry fer callin' you a douchebag, kid, but keep it down, _please._ I can't handle _any _noise at or _above_ eleven today."

"Sorry, Pickle," Toki whispered, looking abashed.

To make the younger man feel better (and also because he decided he wanted to see what he got for Christmas), Skwisgaar got up and stumbled across the room to the tree, rummaging through the packages until he found one marked "Toki" and another marked "Skwisgaar". He wandered back to the couch and tossed the "Toki" package into their rhythm guitarist's hands.

"Hey, what about us?" Nathan growled.

"Gets yours own," Skwisgaar said, not looking up as he ripped into his own gift.

"Douche," Pickles muttered. Murderface shot Skwisgaar the finger with his good hand. Fortunately they were all too hungover to come after him and take revenge for not thinking of them, so they sat back and grumbled but then left the two Scandinavians in peace.

Skwisgaar pulled the packaging off his small, lumpy present...and then shook out the present. It was a length of fuzzy wool; a scarf, he found. Hand-knit, too; he could see a few little lumps where the knitter had made an error and hadn't undone it. It was blue, a few shades darker than his eyes.

Murderface saw it and crowed with derision. "Hah! A scharf!" He sprayed spit from between the gap in his front teeth. "That's a shishshy giffft if I ever shaw it!"

Skwisgaar saw Toki's fingers clench convulsively on his own present. Before Skwisgaar could stop him (and after a moment he decided he didn't want to), Toki got up, neatly set his package down, walked over to Murderface with quite a calm expression on his face and with his bearing perfectly relaxed, slugged Murderface straight in the nose with all the (considerable) strength he could muster, and then turned around, picked up his gift, and marched off for his own rooms.

Skwisgaar dared to peek at Murderface, certain the bassist would be coming after Toki with murder in his lime-green eyes. But no -- Toki's strike had been powerful enough to knock the older man out cold. Murderface sprawled between Nathan and Pickles, head limply lolling backwards, blood streaming down from his mashed nose.

Skwisgaar didn't stick around. Instead, he went after Toki.

He found the younger man in his bedroom. Toki had unwrapped his gift and was staring at it.

"Another model plane?" Skwisgaar said in Swedish, though he already knew what it was.

Toki nodded and looked up at Skwisgaar. His eyes were not full of tears -- Skwisgaar hadn't expected them to be -- but he did look incredibly sad. Skwisgaar thought back through his life and decided that he had never seen such a sorrowful look on another person's face, though certainly in his own life he had felt such emotions, especially when younger. He just had done his damnedest to never show it in front of another human being. His mother, he was certain, felt no emotions of any sort.

"Do you hate your scarf?" Toki asked, speaking Norwegian again. He pointed listlessly to the length of blue wool in Skwisgaar's fist. Toki did not sound particularly hopeful; it was as if he expected that Skwisgaar would, indeed, genuinely hate it.

Skwisgaar hastily put it around his neck. "It's very warm, Toki."

Toki nodded and squared his shoulders. "I knitted it," he admitted. "I know knitting is a sissy girly thing, but Mama taught me how to knit when I was young. I could make most of my own clothes that way. We had some sheep for a while, and I took the wool from them and made it into yarn. Some of it we sold and the rest we used for ourselves."

Skwisgaar nodded, his mind filled with images of a young brown-haired boy herding a flock of shaggy sheep on some windswept green northern field. The sky would be a cold grey-blue, the color of Toki's eyes. "You're a good knitter," he said. "A _brutal_ knitter."

Toki grinned weakly, rising to the bait. "Better at knitting than I am at the guitar?"

"_Pfft!_ Oh, much better. Your guitar-playing is so crappy, it sounds like knitting needles, Toki. Clickety-clicky click-click-click, that's what you sound like."

"Oh, yeah? Maybe I'll kill you one day, Skwisgaar. On stage in front of a million people." Toki's grin was steadily widening.

"I'd like to see you try."

"I hate you, Skwisgaar."

"I hate you more, you little baby."

"I hate you _even_ more, you stupid straw-head Swede."

They grinned at each other.

Skwisgaar sat down on Toki's bed, feeling comfortable in an uncomfortable sort of way. "So why did you give me the scarf?" he asked, feeling uneasily like Dr. Twinkletits, but having to know why, for some reason. Why the scarf. Why him mopping Toki's face up after the kid had vomited. Why he had sung Toki to sleep last night with a Swedish children's lullaby.

Toki looked uncomfortable, as uncomfortable as Skwisgaar felt (but of course didn't show). "Do you have a brother, Skwisgaar? A sister?"

"If I ever did, Serveta gave them away or aborted them," he replied bluntly. "I have a mother, an aunt, and a cousin. That's all the family I know of. So in other words, no. You?"

Toki shook his head, eyes downcast. There was a long silence. Then:

"I always wanted a brother. Younger or older, it didn't matter. Can you be my brother, Skwisgaar?"

Skwisgaar blinked. Once. Then twice. They were long blinks.

Quietly: "Toki, why yous wants a brother?" He was so shocked he used English. "Dumb dildos."

It was the wrong thing to say. Toki's face went red and he swatted Skwisgaar with a pillow. "I _do _want a brother!" he said, still using Norwegian. "Why don't you?"

Skwisgaar flipped his hair back out of his face and glared at the younger man. "Because! Siblings are --" he had never really thought about what siblings were, given that he didn't have any. Beside him, Toki was silent, his arms crossed over his chest.

Skwisgaar's feelings about any potential brothers or sisters had been...ambivalent when he was growing up. It was true that he had often been lonely as a child. When he was in school, he was one out of many students, neither the very best nor the very worst, and thus not elicting any special attention. When he was at home, he was frequently ignored by his mother. If he did something to thwart her purposes in any way (her purposes mainly being limited to drinking and screwing random men), he would be screamed at. Very rarely was he beaten. His mother hated getting blood and Skwisgaar's tears and snot on her hands or clothes. It was the same reason that she had never held him as an infant and young child. She literally could not stand to touch him.

It was for this reason that Skwisgaar occasionally had wanted a sister or brother. Someone to share the experiences of his life with, someone to commiserate with. Someone who would pay him more mind than his own mother did. Someone, who, at the very least, would huddle with him under the covers on a cold winter's night, when the whole house was an icebox because Serveta could not pay the heating bill.

But sometimes...oh, sometimes, there were the times when he was not alone, not ignored, not unloved by Serveta. Those times were rare and far apart. He treasured them more than he would ever admit. When she was happy, her usually dull, slack face would light up with a smile. She would comb her hair and make it shine. Her blue eyes (the exact shade of his own) would sparkle. And young Skwisgaar would know why men had once called her the most beautiful woman in Sweden.

And on those days, he was glad he had no siblings. He was glad that he only had his mother, and that her attention was for him alone.

One summer day so long ago that he could no longer remember the year or even how old he had been (though he must have been young), she had been in those high spirits for no discernible reason. She had cooked breakfast for him -- pancakes running with fresh fruit and sugar. The kitchen had glowed and sparkled with light. Everything had seemed new, including Serveta herself.

He had eaten his fill, and then she had taken him out for a day at the park. It had been hot that year, the day full of warm breezes and sunshine, the sky full of clouds like cotton candy. She had bought him ice-cream; he could remember that. She had laughed and smiled, sometimes at the men who stopped to admire this beautiful woman and her handsome little son, sometimes at him. Skwisgaar hadn't cared about the men -- he hadn't even noticed. All he could see that day was his mother's smile, her eyes on him. It tasted sweeter than any sugar, any ice-cream. It was something he had been craving and denied for so long that he had not even realized how sweet it would really be.

She hadn't found a man that day, but for once it hadn't mattered. She had still smiled even as the perfect day wore to a close. She had still smiled even as she gave Skwisgaar a bubble bath and tucked him into bed. She had even read him a story from an old book of Scandinavian fairy-tales before he went to sleep.

When he had told her that he loved her, and called her Mama, Skwisgaar had thought he had seen tears in her eyes, but over the years the memories had soured with his cynicism and disappointment, and now he could no longer be sure. In his heart, in his understanding, his mother had no emotions, and that was easier for him to comprehend. Easier for him to understand.

That one perfect day had been a taste of heaven. It had been the first and last time he would call her Mama, the first and last time he would (or could) say that he loved her with all his heart, the first and last time he ever truly trusted her. The next day it was all gone as though it had never been, and young Skwisgaar, noticing her dull, slack, apathetic gaze light upon him as he walked into the kitchen that following morning, had wondered if it had all been a dream.

"Perhaps it was," he said to himself. He would not let himself cry over it. Crying was not metal, it was for babies and sissies. He had no emotions over it, just as his mother had none.

"What?"

Skwisgaar blinked. He had forgotten about Toki sitting beside him. Silent. Expectant. Hopeful.

"No, Toki."

"No what?"

"I don't want a brother or a sister. I don't need one. And neither do you." He would not allow himself to hope for that unbroken love; would not allow himself to trust Serveta, Toki...anyone. He would be alone, consonant, unbroken and unbending. No longer would he wander, looking for something and someone he would never find.

Toki fumed -- _just like a child,_ Skwisgaar thought with a twist of anger and pain. "Who are you to tell me what I don't need?"

"Because -- because I just will! And because I can, just like when I order you around during practice! Toki, believe me. I do not want a brother. I do not need a brother."

"And so you don't want me as your brother, then." Toki's eyes and expression were hard, his mouth set in a little snarl that showed his pointy teeth. There was a strange, non-brutal glimmer in his eyes, but when he spoke again, his Norwegian was clipped, his tone cold. "I understand."

Skwisgaar knew then that he was no longer welcome in Toki's room. The knowledge hurt, though of course he would never admit it. "Fine, be that way, _knitter_," he snarled, and got up and headed for the door.

He half expected Toki to jump him and beat him up before he got out, but Toki made no moves, said nothing, did nothing. Skwisgaar could feel the Norwegian's eyes on his back as he left, though, and the silence was heavy between them even as he got down the hall.

In truth, he liked the silence even less than he liked the idea of having a sibling, but there was no going back on what he'd said, and Skwisgaar Skwigelf was the sort of man who liked the idea of apologizing or saying he had been wrong even less, remarkably, than he liked the cold silence that had descended between himself and Toki.

/

It took several days for the ice to thaw between them, and when it finally did, Skwisgaar finally could truly breath, with that oppressing, invisible weight finally lifting off his shoulders. It reminded him of a winter in Sweden, long ago. He had been barely a teen at the time, just starting out with his guitar. The instrument was his best friend then, replacing his sporadic childhood pals, those rare boyfriends of Serveta's who bothered to be kind to him, and his mother herself. His guitar, at least, would always be with him, would never betray him, never play him false.

The winter had been long and cold, and it had finally broken in stages, loosening its grip on the country slowly. He had been out in the countryside, then; Serveta had gone to a winter cottage for the holidays and had reluctantly taken her son with her. He had endured both the resentful ice of her presence and the long ice of the winter with his breath held, not truly realizing how weighty they both were until they were finally gone and he could go outside and escape. The winter had gone at last, and he had rushed out of the cottage one morning, fingers thrumming the guitar strings eagerly, greeting the morning and the spring alike. He had felt free.

So it was when Toki decided to forgive him. He was free again, and he was grateful to his liberator, who had once been his jailor. Toki had forgiven him. Skwisgaar never forgave; it was an unmetal thing to do, a non-brutal thing. Right up there with singing a lullaby to your best friend. But he was grateful that Toki had sacrificed his own brutality, his own darkness, to do him this one favor, this one kindness. He was more grateful than he would ever -- or could ever -- admit.

It was New Year's Eve when the ice finally thawed. Nathan, Pickles, and Murderface, having all sworn that they would stay up to watch the ball drop on TV and usher in the new year, had all drunk themselves blind and stupid and finally drunk themselves into bed. Skwisgaar was alone in the living room, watching something pointless on TV with the volume muted down.

"Are the others gone?" Norwegian.

Skwisgaar blinked. Toki hadn't spoken to him in days. He turned slowly, warily, half-expecting a punch...or worse. _Maybe the kid really will kill me, now that the others are gone._ He surreptitiously slipped his guitar's strap over his shoulder, preparing to grab it by the neck and bash Toki over the head if it came to that.

But no. Toki held no weapons, made no show of violence. He looked drained, a little drunk, and a little sad. "Are the others gone?"

Skwisgaar nodded, relaxing.

"Good." Toki stayed there as if he'd glued his feet to the floor with his airplane glue. Skwisgaar finally had to jerk his blond head in the direction of the couch, indicating that Toki could sit down, before the younger man made a move.

They settled down on the couch together, allowing a silence to spring up that at first was uncomfortable, then slowly became comfortable. Skwisgaar began to strum his guitar, not really playing anything in particular. Toki leaned his head back, his long brown hair falling down the back of the couch.

"Hey, Skwisgaar," he said after a moment, "play that song."

Skwisgaar froze. "What song?"

"You know, that one you sang to me. Please?"

Skwisgaar complied. He didn't sing, but he played the song, very softly, sometimes adding in notes or building upon the theme to make it more complex.

After a while, Toki began to sing, in decent if accented Swedish,

_"Ensam går jag här och vankar,_

_Söker efter vännen min_

_Ensam går jag här och vankar,_

_Söker efter vännen min."_

Skwisgaar blinked, but kept playing. It was hard to break his concentration when he really got into playing something, and he found, much to his relief, that Toki was not one of those rare things that could do so. He was, however, a little surprised that Toki could remember the words, but then, Toki was full of surprises, and it was hard to know if you'd ever truly gotten to understand him fully or not. Sometimes Skwisgaar could read him like an open Swedish book, and then other times he was as uninterpretable as a stone tablet written in a long-dead language.

Skwisgaar decided to ignore that for now, and concentrate on the enjoyment of the moment. He kept playing, kept riffing. Sometimes he sped up, as if daring Toki to match him, then he slowed down, just for the hell of it and to see if it would throw Toki off-pace. Not at all. Toki hung on like Fenrir himself.

Toki let him go into a perfectly gratuitous ad-libbed guitar solo before singing,

_"Se, jag möter honom här,_

_Han, som är min hjärtans kär_

_Vill du såsom förr med mej_

_Svänga om I dansen säj?"_

Skwisgaar laughed and let the last note ring in the air. They'd both actually managed to make it a bit metal. Just a bit. Not enough to tell the others about, but enough for them.

"That was good, Toki," he said, chuckling. Toki grinned back, and went to fetch them some wine.

The New Year was dawning on them. Toki poured the wine and offered a glass to Skwisgaar, who accepted.

"Here, Skwisgaar, can I play you something?" Toki asked, and to his own private amazement, Skwisgaar surrendered his Gibson Explorer and let Toki run his fingers over the strings, coaxing gentle sound from them.

Toki went into a melody that, if rather fast, managed to be gentle and delicate at the same time. He began to sing.

_"Pål sine høner på haugen ut sleppte,_

_høna så lett over haugen sprang._

_Pål kunne vel på hønom fornemma,_

_reven var ute med rumpa så lang._

_Klukk, klukk, klukk,_

_Sa høna på haugom._

_Klukk, klukk, klukk,_

_Sa høna på haugom._

_Pål han sprang og rengde med augom_

_"Nå tør' eg ikkje koma heim åt ho mor!"_

Skwisgaar, feeling naked without his guitar, found himself tapping out a rhythm on the arm of the couch. He was a fair drummer, though not an excellent one like Pickles, and he could at least hold a rhythm. After a while he remembered that he had heard this song at some point in his life -- perhaps as a child, perhaps not, perhaps when they had been on tour in Norway -- and began to sing along. He took the next verses, remembering them perfectly, more or less (both Scandinavians had remarkable memory when it came to songs, melodies, and lyrics; the gift of long experience and not being able to read music)--

_"Pål han gjekk seg litt lenger på haugen,_

_fekk han sjå raven låg på høna å gnog._

_Pål han tok seg ein stein uti næven,_

_dogleg han då ræven slog._

_Ræven flaug, så rumpa hans riste!_

_Ræven flaug, så rumpa hans riste!_

_Pål han gret for høna han miste_

_"Nå tør' eg ikkje koma heim åt ho mor!"_

Skwisgaar grinned at Toki, Toki grinned back, and Toki took the last verse before Skwisgaar blended his own voice in with remarkable smoothness, the Swede taking a quick sip of wine to loosen up his vocal chords and memory bank before joining in. Toki's fingers thrummed the guitar strings, adding in chords with dizzying speed and clarity and purpose. Skwisgaar dropped his voice, deepening it, making it a little raspy to complement Toki's high and rather bland vocals. It worked remarkably well.

_"Ikkje kan ho verpa, og ikkje kan ho gala,_

_ikkje kan ho krypa, og ikkje kan ho gå!_

_Eg får gå meg til kverna og mala,_

_og få att det mjølet eg miste I går!_

_"Pytt!" sa'n Pål, "eg er ikkje bangen,"_

_"Pytt!" sa'n Pål, "eg er ikkje bangen,_

_kjæften å motet har hjelpt no så mangen,_

_Eg tør' nok vel koma heim åt ho mor!"_

Toki silenced the strings abruptly and cheered. Skwisgaar, feeling loose and light in the head, as if he was floating in the clouds, cheered along with him. They high-fived, they shouted "Hey!" or whatever the equivalent was to that in both Swedish and Norwegian. They both felt drunk and silly and happy. The ice had thawed and the clock had struck twelve. Ignored by both of them, the ball dropped in near-perfect silence on the huge TV screen.

"That is actually--" Skwisgaar belched-- "a very metal song, you know?"

Toki giggled. "Yeah, the chickens get it!"

Skwisgaar howled. "We should sing it for Nathan! He would be all--" Skwisgaar hunched over and held up his hand, mimicking Nathan speaking into his PDA-- "'Uhhh, chickens. Being eaten. Yeah. Alive. Yeah. Blood everywhere.'"

Toki was laughing so hard his face was red. "You--" he gasped and snorted-- "you says it, Skwisgaar!" He handed the guitar over, and for once Skwisgaar felt no pang of jealousy.

The laughter slowed down, died away. They looked at each other, each red-eyed and tired and drunk, and very happy.

"We should start a band, a side-project, you and me," Toki said finally. "What would you want to name it?"

And Skwisgaar found that he was no longer afraid of having a sibling. He had had one now for so long that when he discovered that fact, he now longer minded it. It was...just the way things were. Spring had come and he could enjoy it, fully. _"Slagbröder,"_ he said at last, and reached over his guitar and clasped Toki's hand, tight, feeling the other's strength and testing his own against it, just a little.

Toki's sharp teeth showed themselves in a smile. "Brothers of War. Brutal."

_/_

_Six months later..._

_/_

It should be noted that although the Brothers of War side-project would not get off the ground officially for several more months, Dethklok's next big smash hit was, appropriately enough, "Feathers Dipped In Blood-Sauce". Nathan even got to play the fox in the official music video, outfitted with makeup that looked more demonic than canine. Skwisgaar and Toki, barely able to conceal their own amusement about the situation, were shanghaied into the production as the hapless chickens. Drenched in gallons of fake blood, they grinned at each other, high-fived, and happily looked forward to the prospect of seeing their own bodies dismembered via CGI in the finished video.

It was, of course, as Toki had predicted, about chickens being eaten. Alive. Forever.

Neither Skwisgaar nor Toki would have had it -- or anything else, for that matter -- any other way.

_The End._

_**Author's notes:**_ The songs sung by Skwisgaar and Toki are real Scandinavian folk songs, Swedish and Norwegian, respectively. The first one is called "Ensam går jag här och vankar" ("I Walk Alone and Wander Here"). You can listen to a midi of the melody at the link provided below. I thought that the rather sad and plaintive lyrics would suit a lonely young Skwisgaar. The second is called "Pål sine høner", or, translated, "Paul and his Chickens". And yes, the chickens do get eaten. It's all very metal.

Google these song titles for lyrics and translations at "Mama Lisa's World". That is a very useful site and has a lot of great information. I personally found it invaluable for this fic.

The title of the fic is Swedish, and is a reference to the Finntroll song of the same name, off the album "Ur Jordens Djup".

Toki calling Skwisgaar a "straw-head" is a veiled reference to the Dunlendish versus the Rohirrim from Lord of the Rings, and is apropos of nothing in particular.

In writing this, I must say that I am indebted to the totally non-metal but still quite rockin' Peter Gabriel and his song "The Book of Love". Listening to it helped me write that 'happy' scene from Skwisgaar's childhood like nothing else could.


End file.
